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When documentarians the directors and his co-director visited Easterling prison in the year 2019, they encountered a misleadingly pleasant atmosphere. Similar to other Alabama's prisons, the prison largely bans journalistic entry, but permitted the filmmakers to record its annual community-organized barbecue. On camera, imprisoned individuals, predominantly Black, danced and laughed to live music and religious talks. However behind the scenes, a different narrative surfaced—terrifying assaults, unreported stabbings, and indescribable violence swept under the rug. Cries for help came from overheated, filthy dorms. When the director moved toward the sounds, a prison official halted recording, stating it was dangerous to interact with the inmates without a security chaperone.

“It was obvious that there were areas of the prison that we were not allowed to view,” Jarecki remembered. “They employ the excuse that everything is about security and safety, since they don’t want you from comprehending what is occurring. These prisons are like secret locations.”

The Stunning Documentary Exposing Years of Abuse

This interrupted barbecue meeting opens the documentary, a powerful new documentary made over half a decade. Collaboratively directed by Jarecki and his partner, the feature-length film exposes a shockingly corrupt system rife with unchecked mistreatment, forced labor, and unimaginable cruelty. It chronicles prisoners’ herculean efforts, under constant danger, to change conditions declared “unconstitutional” by the US justice department in 2020.

Covert Recordings Reveal Ghastly Conditions

Following their suddenly ended prison visit, the directors made contact with individuals inside the Alabama department of corrections. Led by veteran organizers Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council, a group of sources supplied years of footage recorded on illegal mobile devices. The footage is ghastly:

• Rat-infested cells
• Piles of human waste
• Spoiled food and blood-streaked floors
• Regular officer violence
• Men removed out in body bags
• Hallways of individuals near-catatonic on substances sold by staff

Council starts the film in five years of isolation as punishment for his organizing; later in filming, he is nearly killed by officers and loses sight in one eye.

The Story of One Inmate: Brutality and Obfuscation

Such violence is, the film shows, standard within the ADOC. As incarcerated sources persisted to gather evidence, the directors looked into the death of an inmate, who was assaulted beyond recognition by guards inside the William E Donaldson correctional facility in October 2019. The Alabama Solution follows the victim's parent, a family member, as she seeks truth from a uncooperative ADOC. The mother discovers the state’s version—that Davis threatened guards with a weapon—on the television. But multiple imprisoned observers informed the family's attorney that Davis held only a toy knife and surrendered immediately, only to be assaulted by four officers regardless.

One of them, an officer, smashed Davis’s head off the hard surface “like a basketball.”

Following three years of evasion, the mother spoke with the state's “law-and-order” top lawyer a state official, who informed her that the state would decline to file charges. Gadson, who faced numerous individual legal actions alleging brutality, was promoted. Authorities covered for his defense costs, as well as those of every officer—part of the $51m spent by the state of Alabama in the last half-decade to protect officers from wrongdoing lawsuits.

Compulsory Labor: The Modern-Day Slavery System

The state benefits economically from ongoing mass incarceration without oversight. The film details the shocking extent and hypocrisy of the prison system's labor program, a compulsory-work system that essentially functions as a present-day mutation of historical bondage. This program supplies $450 million in products and services to the state each year for virtually minimal wages.

Under the system, imprisoned laborers, mostly African American residents deemed unfit for society, earn $2 a day—the same pay scale established by the state for imprisoned labor in 1927, at the peak of racial segregation. These individuals labor more than half a day for private companies or public sites including the state capitol, the executive residence, the judicial branch, and municipal offices.

“Authorities allow me to work in the public, but they don’t trust me to give me release to leave and return to my family.”

These laborers are numerically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are not, even those considered a higher security threat. “This illustrates you an idea of how important this free workforce is to the state, and how important it is for them to maintain individuals locked up,” stated Jarecki.

Prison-wide Strike and Continued Fight

The Alabama Solution culminates in an incredible achievement of activism: a state-wide prisoners’ strike calling for improved treatment in 2022, led by Council and his co-organizer. Illegal cell phone video reveals how ADOC broke the protest in less than two weeks by starving prisoners en masse, assaulting the leader, sending soldiers to threaten and beat others, and cutting off communication from organizers.

A Country-wide Problem Beyond One State

The strike may have failed, but the lesson was evident, and outside the borders of Alabama. Council concludes the documentary with a plea for change: “The abuses that are taking place in Alabama are taking place in your state and in your behalf.”

From the reported violations at New York’s a prison facility, to California’s use of 1,100 imprisoned firefighters to the frontlines of the LA wildfires for less than minimum wage, “one observes comparable things in most jurisdictions in the union,” noted Jarecki.

“This isn’t just Alabama,” said the co-director. “There is a new wave of ‘tough on crime’ approaches and language, and a punitive strategy to {everything